Honors Mobs (Relic Holders)

Comments

I just think it's a bit asinine to belittle someone for thinking that a mob is too strong when they can't defeat it, since that's exactly what we're trained to believe throughout the game. The mobs that are immortal until some sort of quest is completed only hit you for a laughable amount of hp, so it becomes fairly obvious that they are immortal and you're missing a step, or that they can't be killed at all.

Its also not surprising when Ashtan (who could probably rustle up 15 dragons on demand) can defeat a mob while Eleusis ( who can probably rustle up 5 dragons on demand) can't.

Its perfectly fine that its requires some tactics to defeat some mobs, and I guess its reasonable that you want to keep those tactics a secret, but its pretty much the definition of insanity to expect someone to come to the correct conclusion, when every other mob they've faced has either been defeated by the F2 key, or is beyond their level of tankiness.

Belladona is one of the oldest honours mobs and has an attached quest to make her easier to kill.

Yet she was (is?) still pretty trivially killable by getting some dragons who just mashed their bashing macro/enter key without doing the quest.

Yes, she is a low strength honours mob, second weakest after Auntie Maim (who also has an attached quest) that can be completed with relative ease and sets aprecedent for honours mobsrequiring more than just spamming attacks to complete. A setup which runs very much counter to Jacen's argument that people never learn to do anything but hit something until it is dead. Just because dragons can smash Belladona into the dirt doesn't mean that is the only way or the proper way to go about completing her honours quest or any other honours quest.

Quite a few honours mobs have a quest to summon them and every other honours quest is, oh ya, a quest so the argument that relic holding mobs should just be rollable by a group of X number of dragons swinging wild is just silly.

Just wait until all the tactics are discovered and then fine-tuned and converted into distributed out-of-band linked scripting systems that get passed around for the sole purpose of acquiring relics to hoard. THEN WHAT?!

I kind of see your point, but in my eyes it enforces my argument instead of running counter to it.

Look at it this way: These two are probably the first two honors mobs most people run in to, and (pre-honors mob buff, at least) didn't require that the quest be done, by any means. Pre-buff, I got the Bella line by Pharaus (or maybe Roroan, don't remember) attacking her in dform until she shielded, and I attempted hit and run (died a couple of times) from there on out. I was < level 80 at the time.

So at what point are you supposed to realize that there's a quest that makes it easier? The game reinforces the "bash macro" mentality with the lowest tiered honors mobs.

I'm not saying that there shouldn't be quests, or bashing shouldn't be more complex, only that it's a bit ridiculous to be snide about it where it exists now, since there's never a clue that says "there's more to this than the F2 key", which is what we're trained to believe by the tens or hundreds of thousands of mobs we've killed before.

I never said that bashing shouldn't be more complex. I don't understand how you're getting that out of my argument. I'm saying that there's more than a few people on here being pretty snide about others not realizing that there are more complex methods that make the high tier mobs killable, when there's no evidence to support it.

You yourself have killed over sixty thousand mobs. Sixty thousand, that you've killed with 'dor kill <target>', and you expect people to just up and think "hey, maybe this one is different"". We've established that Belladonna and Maim are definitely killable without any sort of quest. and I take your "Ugrach is always that insane" to mean that there's no quest to weaken him, so when is anyone supposed to realize that a mob is different?

I'm just saying that it's pretty stupid to patronize people over realizing that the method they've used to kill tens of thousands of mobs just like this one won't work this time.

I've actually killed over 60,000 mobs with a macro, I've never used dor to bash, generally just idly tapping bashing macro while I watch a show or a movie on my other monitor, and I still switch to blast when a mob shield while dragon bashing

Maybe the fact that you've put so little effort into bashing, evidenced by your anecdotes and assumptions of my habits, is why you didn't expect there to be a deeper level to the game. Even vanilla mobs have a handful of mechanics that make things hugely different if you intelligently manage them. @Jhui and myself were joking about how most people have no idea how to use standard mob behaviors to bash Poly/Tundra without getting stomped by groups.

Achaea is not a dor bashing game, but people who are over-leveled and artied out try to turn it into that. Spamming an attack to kill a mob is the exception to intelligent bashing, not the rule.

Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

Why don't you share a few of your bashing tips then, instead of the condescending "I'm better than you but I'm not going to tell you how" tone? I'm level 92 and I only know one thing that I would even call "strategic". Is that my own fault? Maybe. Do I have any reason to expect Manara bashing to be different from Minia, or Moghedu bashing to be different from Manara, or Quartz Peak bashing to be any different from Moghedu? From day one of playing Achaea, you're fed "If it kills you, your not strong enough to bash it yet" No one ever says "if it kills you, there's probably a different strategy you can use to kill it".

I'll start with my one and only bashing strategy: Once you get an village to hate you, such that they are aggro, you can pull mobs off stacks by waiting for them to emote at you, then moving adjacent. Only works for mobs that chase. All that comes to mind that I use it for are the mhun knights in Moghedu that are mobile, and the 13 stack of Arcadian guards in Arcadia.

I'll start with my one and only bashing strategy: Once you get an village to hate you, such that they are aggro, you can pull mobs off stacks by waiting for them to emote at you, then moving adjacent. Only works for mobs that chase. All that comes to mind that I use it for are the mhun knights in Moghedu that are mobile, and the 13 stack of Arcadian guards in Arcadia.

that's actually a very good start. I don't think Jarrod's being condescending, but I also don't think you're giving yourself enough credit.

Here's a quick one, that was extremely useful during Conclave. Mob anchoring:

- Mobs without chase behavior, but with patrol behavior, can have their patrol behavior stopped.

If you cause a mob to become aggressive to you, whether by hitting it directly or attacking someone it assists in room with it, it will no longer patrol. Handful of uses include hitting one of two patrol mobs when it leaves the room, then moving to the other patrol mob to kill it, since the first one is now 'locked' to whatever room you hit it in, also useful if a patrol mob is in room with a chase mob, you hit either and move out, the patrol mob is locked and the chase mob will follow (fire elemental + wyvern in room is a good conclave example) to kill it alone.

Dangers: If you have a stack of patrolling enemies and hit anything in the room to cause them to go aggressive, they will no longer patrol and split up their group. It's important to remember this as you can keep mobs patrolling if you stop attacking and move out when a patrol moves in, it won't stick around unless you hit it or it leaps to defend something. During conclave it was very normal behavior for one of us to chase patrolling mobs in the more spread out sections of the island to hit them once, to make sure they didn't clump again in the future.

Cascades of quicksilver light streak across the firmament as the celestial voice of Ourania intones, "Oh Jarrod..."

I figured things like this were pretty common knowledge. Reasons why people wouldn't naturally pick up on these things are:

You're automating and therefore not thinking about what's happening when you bash.

You're repeating bashing routines that you've learned by following other people around and you're stuck in those routines because it's what you're used to.

You've never had to think about what's going on because you never bash solo - only in groups where you're not the leader.

Or you've been advised frequently that you're better off bashing things you can handle easily, rather than things where you have to hit and run or use any other tactics that will slow you down, so you never had a reason to learn what those slower tactics were.

Jacen does bring a good point up. At least with Oghulor there was an indicator that you should attempt something different to try to kill him. With the current settings there is no real guideline. I'd enjoy it if maybe after attempting and dying that one of the denizens sends you a tell ("Pssst, I have an idea, come see me as soon as you can.") Something to forward the progress of the attempts.

The Ashtani are 100% right about this. And I don't want any of this automatic spoon-feeding of hints Jacen is calling for, either. I hate few things more than a great quest like the old Hermes' blessing health buff getting freely spread around to everyone until it is functionally part of Achaean mainstream knowledge. There need to be rewards to mastering quests and learning lore. Awesome rewards, that are not handed to you on a silver platter and which cannot be earned by dumping enough money into artefacts and bashing to dragon to plow your way through everything.

Also, if you're struggling to figure out the really tough quests, I've found that the great explorers/questers in Achaea are like Sith Lords. They only take one apprentice at a time, the apprentice has to be incredibly dedicated to the art, and at most they'll give up only hints to or parts of the secret, leaving you to do the vast majority of the work yourself. But people will still help, and that's another area where the social factor of the game applies. Begging for people to divulge secrets on the forums won't get you far.

Here's a quick one, that was extremely useful during Conclave. Mob anchoring:

- Mobs without chase behavior, but with patrol behavior, can have their patrol behavior stopped.

If you cause a mob to become aggressive to you, whether by hitting it directly or attacking someone it assists in room with it, it will no longer patrol. Handful of uses include hitting one of two patrol mobs when it leaves the room, then moving to the other patrol mob to kill it, since the first one is now 'locked' to whatever room you hit it in, also useful if a patrol mob is in room with a chase mob, you hit either and move out, the patrol mob is locked and the chase mob will follow (fire elemental + wyvern in room is a good conclave example) to kill it alone.

Dangers: If you have a stack of patrolling enemies and hit anything in the room to cause them to go aggressive, they will no longer patrol and split up their group. It's important to remember this as you can keep mobs patrolling if you stop attacking and move out when a patrol moves in, it won't stick around unless you hit it or it leaps to defend something. During conclave it was very normal behavior for one of us to chase patrolling mobs in the more spread out sections of the island to hit them once, to make sure they didn't clump again in the future.

I use this all the time, but sometimes I slip up and get too many denizens in the same room. Do we know how long it takes them to get back onto their regular "routine"?

I think most all of the faction bias around bashing prowess over the last couple of pages here and in other threads is completely incorrect.

A large number of us know exactly how pops, patrolling, agro, and all manner of other mechanics with denizens work and use this knowledge to our advantage all the time. In fact during the reckoning, and contrary to popular forum belief we cleared the tundra many times as individuals and in groups of 2-3. We also killed Oghulor with small groups as well quite successfully, without any of the factional advantages of devo, priestess, AF/BW etc just by using our knowledge of how the mechanics worked.

I actually died more often when we did have big groups than I did solo, mainly because you get lazy and play follow the leader (and most of our combat/group leaders are not great bashers really)

That aside I think honours mobs should be looked at for balancing. I am not saying that some are too strong or too weak but it would be nice to know that they are all doable within reason with a reasonable and achievable group.

@Draekar‌ they are all doable within reason. I have been a party to groups of four or less that have killed all of them recently

Yeah I was not sure about the most ridicules ones, but the normal methods for killing them didn't really rely on being able to outdamage them before they killed you and as such the bashing changes only mean it takes longer now.

If they can all be killed by groups of four or less then that is something every faction can do and shouldn't be a problem.

I can guarantee they are all able to be killed by any faction. Just need to figure out all the quirks. We put a lot of thought into how to kill each of them, which is why it is getting so smooth for us. Except ugrach, we stumbled into that one on accident.